Tell me about Windstones :)

[Zexious]

Hi there!

I stumbled across this site yesterday through an ad on Facebook, and was immediately taken back to my childhood. I vividly recall a store (in a state that I no longer live in, and in a mall that’s no longer standing) that carried these beauties. I remember being smitten with the aesthetic even as an adolescent, but admiring them from afar.

Now, my mind tells me that I don’t need to start another collection. But my little heart (soft and sweet as it is) just can’t get over the vibrant colors, the expressive faces, and the wonderful attention to detail.

So, I’d like to learn a little more about them!
What draws you to Windstones? How many do you have, and how often do you purchase them? Do you have a favorite sculpt, or species? Do you collect anything else?

I’m a real sucker for a surprise, and keep coming back to the “grab bag” releases. How often are grab bags generally released, and how many are generally made in a “run”? Are they one of a kind?

I perused the Rules sticky, and the recent threads, and hope that this is an appropriate thread, posted in the appropriate place. I hope to become an active member of your wonderful little community :’)

[Bodine]

Hi and WELCOME ZEXIOUS! We are very glad you found us and joined in.We are a little community of wonderful people,artists,muses,writers and just all-around awesome folks.Our collections range from just a few pieces to hundreds,literally.I personally have 150,been collecting actively since 2009.Ms.Melody Pena is the creator of these amazing pieces of art.She is also active on the forum and offers us a free raffle of a beautiful sculpture every month from the goodness of her heart.We appreciate her oodles as well.We welcome you to join us in our little Swaps as well.{see swap thread for examples}

My first Windstone was the lovely white mother coiled with golden egg,hooked from then on so don’t be shy,buy,buy,buy!LOL Please do share any photos you wish of your collection[s],pets,self or whatever you wish.We hope you stick around,make some friends and collect some gorgeous pieces of Windstone art.My favorite sculpt of the incredible Hearth Female Dragon.This is my beautiful “Queen Azura”

Every act matters.No matter how small💞
(Wanted......Brimstone Lap)
Male Hearth....one day🤞Dream on.

[Angelika_Zen]

Welcome aboard, Zexious! Your mind and wallet might be telling you, you don’t need to start collecting, but … well … good luck with that! 😉

I started collecting Windstones in the early 90’s, when I was gifted the now ‘old’ white unicorns. This led to black unicorns and Peacock dragons, before being boxed up for 2 decades. I started collecting again almost 7 years ago, when I joined the forum. Thanks to a bunch of “enablers” on the forum ** you know who you are!! lol! **, my collection has grown and my bank account has not! It’s the incredible attention to detail and quality craftsmanship that keeps me coming back. That AND the amazing customer service!!  Windstones are second to none, imo. I don’t need to collect anything else.  I lost count of how many I have. Tadpoads really drove that number through the roof though. I am partial to Male dragons, Orientals (the adult varieties), and Poads (every generation).

The evolution of grab bags has been something to see.  There are links to all the old GB threads, but most of the pictures have been removed.  If you want to see some of what the past brought, forum member Hannah has created this wonderful online space: http://www.deadbunny.org/ where various GBs can be viewed.

Have fun – this is a great place!

 

Wanted: "Dragon Fruit" Male Dragon ~ "Fire Berry", "Paradise", "Dragon Fruit", "Tie Dye" ~ The brighter, the better!

[StormDancer]

Welcome Zexious.

I recall first seeing Windstones when I was about 16 and falling in love with them. It would be years later though before I was able to begin my collection. The first three pieces I was able to add to my family were the Emperor, Male and Female Rainbow dragons. I got them thru a Hallmark store in Montana in 2002. The owner was kind enough to be willing to work out a payment plan over several months, even though she was permanently closing the store. I still vividly recall the magical feeling of them when I was bringing them home, the overwhelming excitement of finally having dragons of my very own. That feeling still surrounds them each and every time I look at them. The Emperor sits on my computer desk watching over me every day. They are true dragons, to me, the feeling of magic never fades. And I always expect them to be getting into some mischief whenever I am not looking at them.

Since then my collection has grown to include almost every Rainbow dragon Ms. Melody has released. I now also have several of the Rubies and a couple of the Peacock dragons as well. They are all incredibly lifelike and seem to add magic to anyplace they sit.

My collection has also grown to include several Grab Bags of different types, including Tanukis, Kirins, Poads, Foxes, a Wolf and of course Unicorns.

Each and every Grab Bag is a one of a kind, signed piece of art. The details and time that goes into them is simply amazing. Grab Bags tend to come out on a roughly 4-6 week timeline. Some times its a bit longer as casting, cleaning and painting each piece does take a significant amount of time for Melody and the Windstone crew.

Once a Grab Bag comes out there is considerable trading among the members to get Grail Pieces from each Grab Bag. That is all part of the fun as well. Just be sure to check out the forum feedback list provided by dragonmedley.

Windstones, once you have one, seem to multiply when you aren’t expecting them to. Your wallet will never be the same!

 

Looking for:
"COSMIC SHIFT DRAGONS and KI-RINS" and the "OCTOPUS TANUKI TEST PAINT #1"

[Kujacker]

Like you, I first saw them when I was a kid in a mall. I had forgotten about them until 2007, when I remembered them and thought that the company probably wasn’t around anymore and maybe I could pick up an old piece for cheap. Lol how wrong was I.
The next two years I collected around 100 pieces. But after those two years, I hit a rough patch in my life, and I have still not recovered from it (it’s only gotten worse)… so the only Windstones I get during the year are from the pyo swaps that the forum members hold.
All my Windstones are boxed away as well, and have been for around the past 6 years now, and it wasn’t until recently when I sold a few did I open a couple boxes. I recently moved as well, and it’s always fun to start moving the boxes and be like “I didn’t buy this piece? I bought this? When? I don’t have this!” Haha.

My original favorite was the scratcher dragon. He’s still a favorite, but the oriental dragons top him. I’m a sucker for asian creatures such as the dragons and lion dogs.
I collect(ed) a bit of everything Windstone though. Back before my troubles, if I liked the color it didn’t matter what sculpture it was on.
My favorite color is the Black Gold, and I have the entire Black Gold collection except for the new hatching dragon, the new small dragons, and the rising spectral.
My most expensive piece is a OOAK male Ki-rin. I believe he was called Purple Fire?

This is the only Windstone, pyos not included, that I have displayed. He’s actually the first Windstone I acquired after remembering and finding the company (old and broken, but was cheap on ebay).

[Nightcrow]

Welcome to the forum (and maybe the hobby)!

Like you, I fell in love with Windstones when I was young.  My best friend had two of the Kirins, and later as a teenager I saw the dragons in a store at the local mall and was smitten all over again.  I knew I had to have them, so I started saving up my allowance.  My first piece was the White Mother Dragon!

Now I have, uh, a lot.  🙂  I got most of the family in White, because it’s my favorite color.   Once I had most of the Whites, though, I needed something else to keep me going, and that “something else” ended up being the Lap Dragon sculpt.  It’s my absolute favorite, and I now own over a dozen!  It’s nice, because it allows me to experience all the colors without having to have an entire family of them the way I did with White.  (The pictures are slightly outdated, but you can see most of my Lap collection if you check out the Show Off Your Conga Line thread!)  I also have a few random other pieces, like bookends and a Frog Prince I picked up at a store closing when visiting my friend with the Kirins.  Since I paint, I also do PYOs.  I fell in love with the Kitty Griffin PYO, particularly; I own four painted ones and there’s one in progress on my painting table right now.  🙂

Now that I have a house and pets to pay for, I don’t buy as often as I’d like to, but for most of my teenagerhood and young adulthood I was a pretty steady buyer.  (Not always directly from Windstone!  Brick and mortar stores and Ebay were important sources for me long before there was a Windstone website.  In fact, I ran the Yahoo Group for collectors for many years so that there would be somewhere to have Windstone discussions, because the forum didn’t exist yet!)

I’m not a big grab bag fan, because I’m kind of picky about color schemes.  The two grab bags I have purchased were a Sitting Red Fox Pebble and a Horse, both of which I ended up selling – the fox because his color didn’t suit my tastes, and the Horse because I decided that I didn’t need yet another collection category.  (I collect Breyer model horses and Windstone dragons, kirins, and griffins; I couldn’t justify collecting Windstone horses, too.)  Plus, a lot of the grab bags are on sculpts I’m not interested in (I haven’t gotten into Poads, I’m not really a fan of Curlies, and Unicorns hit the same “I already collect a different kind of horse” problem as the Pebble Horse.)  I do, however, love some of the Ebay test paints that Windstone has produced!  My first non-regular production piece was a Black Violet Peacock test paint… and until I bought a car, it was the most expensive single item I had ever purchased!  😀  He’s still my pride and joy, but he has been joined by another test paint Old Warrior and a test paint Lap Dragon.

Welcome again, and please enjoy all the lovely information and pictures in the forum – and ask us forum-users if you have any more questions!  We will happily talk your ear off about our favorite pastime.  🙂

Interested in buying or trading for: GB Pebble Sitting Red Fox in dark grey, Lap Dragon Test Paints (Water Sprite, Glacial Pearl, Opulence, Pastel Rainbow, and many others - see my Classifieds ad), Blue Morpho OW, GB Pebble Loaf dragons in blue/aqua/teal, and Griffin Test Paints (Black Rainbow or Frosted Jade).

[fatalbeauty]

I fell in love with them from a little store in the mall called Wicks and Sticks, I would stare at them for a long time but would only leave with the little pamphlet since teen me didn’t have the money….I bought a Wizard Cat from them on my later Blockbuster salary but they closed shortly after…..for years, I just stared at the pamphlets a lot since I didn’t know where else to find them since the internet was still the slow makes a lot of noise connection and looking at anything with pictures was hard on the old internet…..

many more years passed and I discovered Lake of the Lake with then boyfriend not yet hubby….they also began to close down so I bought a ruby mother dragon and then started poking Ebay a little….but still I didn’t think to find Windstone’s website until after I got married then the collecting began! I think I have like 125 ish now but it’s hard to count them all! I just love the uniqueness of all the sculpts, I still stare at them just as much as I did in the mall all those years ago…..

4 things I'm looking for:
1. Mother Meerkat
2. production color Sitting Young Oriental dragons to be made in more colors besides VF
3. Female Griffin – Siamese with White
4. September Raffle Prize 2022 AHD Male Griffin

[etruscan]

Not sure why editing something is causing trouble tonight … let’s try again …

Welcome. 🙂  The most important fact about Windstones is that they multiply when you’re not looking – how else could they be taking over all available shelf space?  The second most important fact about Windstones is that they do terrible things to your bank account.  You have been warned!

My “Windstone origin story” is a little different – Once upon a time, many years ago, a catalog (probably the Smithsonian catalog) carried the hatching tortoise and the hatching protoceratops.  I got the tortoise but the protoceratops was too expensive.  In 2010 I decided to see whether I could find a protoceratops.  Ebay to the rescue, and it was all downhill from there!

As others have observed, Windstones are like potato chips (you can’t stop with just one).  Spring 2010 was the middle of the Windstone move from North Hollywood, California, to Corvallis, Oregon, and the only pieces they were producing were test paints by Melody.  The test paints were sold on ebay – dragons, unicorns, pegasi, flap cats, and other sculpts, all with charming drawings by Melody on their Certificates of Authenticity.  Lovely sculpts … beautifully painted … One of a Kind … who could resist?

Once the Windstone move was completed and (most of) the boxes were unpacked, and a few production problems were overcome, the new factory started making “Production” and “Limited Production” colors again.  I have accumulated a number of these, but I still like the test paints best.

Grab Bags were a later innovation.  Originally they were a way for someone to get a unique piece painted by Melody without having to pay ebay prices.  Over time the painting has become much more elaborate and the prices have more than doubled, but they still offer a chance to get a One of a Kind piece and so far we still snatch them up.  Most of the batches of Grab Bags are about 120 pieces.  Depending on the sculpt they may sell out in two or three days (young unicorns), or they may be in the store for a few months (Arctic foxes and tadpoads).

One nice thing about Windstones is their variety.  Dragon lovers, and cat lovers, and unicorn lovers, and pegasus lovers, and wizard lovers, and griffin lovers, and Poad lovers can all find something to collect!  Or, for someone who likes to paint, there is the Windstone experience offered by the Paint Your Own pieces.  Having a Forum full of great people helps too. 🙂

Different people have different types of collections.  One person may collect only a few favorite sculpts, another may collect all the dragons in one or two color schemes, or whatever appeals to him or her (usually her).

My favorites are baby unicorns, curled dragons, and Rising Spectrals, but I have some of everything.  They all make me happy (she says, smiling at the Mother Bear with her cubs) and that’s why I have them.

[Bodine]

Wicks and Sticks is where I got my first one too.Shame they have closed here.

Every act matters.No matter how small💞
(Wanted......Brimstone Lap)
Male Hearth....one day🤞Dream on.

[Zexious]

Thank you all for the warm welcome! I can tell this is a fabulous community already <3

I love, love, love all the photos of these beautiful sculpts, and hearing stories of how everyone got involved in the hobby! Do you all ever have meet ups or events? Where are you all located? Mostly the States?

Bodine – Queen Azura is absolutely stunning! She looks big! What are her dimensions like?

Angelika – Wow, seven years! Thank you for directing me to DeadBunny; lots of eye candy there!

Storm – What a wonderful story! Aren’t enablers just the best? 😉

Kujacker – I think he’s wonderful! Look at those beautiful scales; simply divine!
I can relate to hitting a tough patch, but it sounds like you’re strong, and hanging in there! And hey, your little desk buddy could be a source of strength as well :’)

Nightcrow – Pictures of your grail, please :D!!
And I collect Breyers as well! <3

fatalbeauty – Wow! 125! Can you share a little about how you display or store them? :’)
I’ve never owned anything made from gypsum; are they very fragile?

etruscan – That’s the most important thing, isn’t it? That our little collections (whatever they may be) bring us happiness.
And thank you for all the information!

 

I’ll share a little about myself!

This is me! Hi, hello <3 I’m a twenty-something, and I just recently moved to Texas with my Boyfriend of almost five years where I work remotely in what(‘s a little hard to explain, but) is essentially a PR position for an online dating company. I’m a huge animal lover (who is on a perpetual quest to acquire more and more fur babies <3), an equestrian, and an avid reader (have any book suggestions?!). I consider myself a “jack of all trades, master of none”, and dabble in (what feels like) just about every hobby under the sun. I collect model horses (so I’m not afraid of miniatures/figurines with a several hundred dollar price tag xD), I game and cosplay in my spare time, and I’m very into high fashion and designer makeup. Thank you all for the warm welcome, it really means a lot!

I’ve already dropped none-too-subtle hints to Boyfriend what I want my next present to be 😉

[fatalbeauty]

just average shelving units, heavy stuff at the bottom so the shelves don’t break…yes, very fragile, gotta be careful with them….

4 things I'm looking for:
1. Mother Meerkat
2. production color Sitting Young Oriental dragons to be made in more colors besides VF
3. Female Griffin – Siamese with White
4. September Raffle Prize 2022 AHD Male Griffin

[Bodine]

The Hearths are 14 1/2  lbs.12 1/2 X 8 1/2 in..My lady is what I would call an Autumn Leaf colorshift.Other colors become available in the store when they are ready.Queen Azura is a prototype.We have loads of information for you.😀

Hope you stick around and have some fun.

Every act matters.No matter how small💞
(Wanted......Brimstone Lap)
Male Hearth....one day🤞Dream on.

[Zexious]

So, question for you all!

I’d love to hear a little more about the “test paints” that appear as auctions on ebay. What’s the likelihood that the color/sculpt combo will be put into production? I imagine there isn’t a formula, but does it generally tends towards one way or the other (being put into production, or remaining the only sample)? And, if they do end up getting produced, are test pieces generally worth more on the second hand market than the regular production pieces?

[etruscan]

Very few of the test paint colors become production or limited production.  “Prismatic Spring” is an exception, and so is “Blue Morpho”.  There may be others but I can’t think of any … no doubt someone will correct me if I’m wrong.  Many of the test paints are simply too elaborate for regular production.

The value of test paint pieces on the second hand market varies with the piece (this is true of Grab Bags also). They do generally bring more on the second-hand market, but they usually cost more also so you don’t necessarily come out ahead.

Several years ago the ebay selling prices for test paints were MUCH higher.  Someone who bought a piece then often has trouble selling it for the same price.  I’m not sure whether the change is the economy, or the greater variety of pieces available from the store which might draw money away from the ebay market, or the more frequent grab bags, or different people buying the test paints these days.  It also could be that Melody used to paint the test paint pieces and now they mostly are created by production painters.  It makes a difference to me but I don’t know how many other people care who painted the piece.

For any Windstone the safest rule is, “Buy what you love, pay what it is worth to you, and enjoy it”.  If you get back what you spent you are doing well, but don’t count on it (especially if you need to sell quickly).  Having the original box with inserts and the COA for special pieces can help you get a better price.

One more point that bears repeating – make sure your family, or significant other, or whoever knows not to take your collection to the flea market following your unexpected demise!  Pieces could be put on ebay or people here are always happy to help.  We all dream of finding a Windstone treasure in a flea market or thrift shop, but we don’t really want pieces to end up there.

[GardenNinja]

Ah, Wicks n Sticks! That is where I was introduced to Windstones, too! Shortly after graduating from college in 1990, I found one in a nearby mall. I was saving hard for a house, so my collection started very slowly. My first piece was a Black Large Wizard that had some nicks in the back side of the base. I got it 25% off for damage I can’t even see. My next pieces were the original black unicorns. When Wicks n Sticks disappeared, I looked for a Windstone website, and discovered there is a golf club called Windstone…. Next stop, Grandio.com. Then I found this website, which for some years was nothing more than a single page with the Windstone logo. I guess they decided to buy up the URL long before they were ready to make a website. After Grandio stopped carrying Windstones, I checked the web site again, and wow it was huge!

I paid off my (tiny) house several years ago, and I have been very fortunate financially. My collection has mushroomed in the last five years. I’ve never counted, but I am guessing several hundred.

Welcome to the forum!

My keyboard is broken. I keep pressing "Escape", but I'm still here.

[Author]

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